Monday, 30 April 2012

They say a picture speaks a thousand words and this is certainly true of this photo of a k***surfer taken at Flag Beach during our Easter Clinic. This ranks as one of my favourite ever k***surfing photos alongside the legendary "K***SURFING PROHIBIDO" sign at centre 2 in Sotavento, which every self-respecting windsurfer who´s been there has a photo of themselves next to. This guy had already been rescued twice and then spent the next three hours at the water´s edge trying to fix this bird´s nest. Looks like great fun...

Sunday, 29 April 2012

Check out Rod´s bit of GoPro footage from his last day at Punta last week... proof indeed that his forwards are fully dialled now. Well done mate. You can follow his whole Fuerte trip and loads of other stuff on http://www.forwards4cowards.blogspot.com/ .

Friday, 27 April 2012

Here´s a few more pics from last week with the two boys. As you can see we got some pretty nice conditions, although turning up every day at 10am meant standing in the shade of the van til the wind picked up...(it also meant, however, that we had Punta completely to ourselves for most of our sessions- see pic above!)

Like I said in the previous post, Rod dialled in his stalled forwards by the end of his stay which you can clearly see in the photos here. Well done!

Better than mine!!!!

Anyway, a supercool week with two supercool guys. Check out the "crash n burn"photo slideshow below showing the warts n all action from a different day, thanks to Mick Relihan for the vid.

Thursday, 26 April 2012

The wind has kept on blowing since the Easter Clinic finished (typically) and I spent last week with Luke Lynch and Rod Dickinson, both very good sailors from the south coast who wanted to work on their forwards- my favourite "work", haha. Luke was having problems getting the rotation whereas Rod´s forwards were already pretty solid but he wanted to learn to stall them and get a more lateral rotation. Conditions couldn´t have been better with strong NE winds every day and good-sized wind swell at Punta and the boys punished themselves admirably in pursuit of their respective goals. We worked out Luke´s rotation problem (leaning too far back on take-off) and he´s off to Morocco in June with Skyeboy where I´m sure he´ll crack it fully (and John will take all the credit, haha)- we just needed one more day, as is so often the case. Check him out in the shots below...

Rod, meanwhile, had an extra few days and he made full use of them- I was stoked to see him cruising out amongst the locals and boosting some big, clean stalled forwards by the end of his stay. His rotation had changed completely so it was job definitely done and a smiling Rod will by now showing off his newfoundaerial prowess at his local beach in the UK. I can still see him smiling...check out one of his stalled forwards right here!

For now, I´ll leave you with a couple of action pics accompanied by some very important forward looping advice, ciao...

Wednesday, 11 April 2012

I´ve finally got the chance to put "finger to key" and give you an abbreviated report on the Puravidaboardriders Easter Windsurf Clinic. Although the forecast disappeared days before they all arrived, the clinic was a huge success again with everyone´s sailing improving noticeably over the week. The wind stayed light to moderate throughout the week but we still got on the water every day except for the last one when we went for a group SUP session which was a hoot (check out Justin´s garb above!).

After the welcome BBQ on the Saturday (mucha cerveza), the week started and we did our utmost to seek out the elusive wind with a fair degree of success. We got in a couple of days at Flag where most of us managed to plane (Hobbsy played a masterstroke and, having seen the forecast, brought a big sail with him and planed every day of the holiday except for his, by now traditional hangover day). Emily planes in nothing anyway and was zipping past everyone as usual, Naomi, the keenest member of the group by a fair old margin, was also flying around on her 5.8.

The next few days were spent down south at Sotavento where the wind was much less fierce than usual, giving me the perfect opportunity to teach tacking, lightwind freestyle and also to introduce young Amber, Justin´s 14 year-old daughter, to our beloved sport- she took to it incredibly quickly, learning beach starts in her first session! Wow! By the end of her second day she was in the harness, tacking and gybing and generally putting the rest of us to shame. Well done that girl and watch out all you women pros- I hear she´s already got herself a 100 litre board (and they live in Marazion, one of the best places to be for wavesailing in the UK!).

In the lighter winds we managed to hammer home the shortboard tack, Fran, Tom and Naomi all got to grips with it and will now be happily tacking away on their shortboards. Hobbsy has it fully cracked now and was tacking my Skate like it was a Vinta Twist! Nice to see Tom (dark horse as always) and Hobbsy cruising around on the wrong side of the sail aswell- 360s will be easy now boys!

On our last afternoon down there, the wind was almost non-existent when we arrived so I taught tacks, helicopter tacks, sail ducks and lee sail tricks from my SUP before the wind picked up nicely as forecast for the last hour and all the theory of the previous couple of days was put into practice. It was great to see everyone blasting around, and see that their level of sailing had improved over the week because of the practice in the lighter winds... I have always maintained that the majority of essential shortboard manouevres (tack and gybe) and, indeed many freestyle manouevres (helicopter tack, duck tack etc.) can be easily learned in lighter winds on a bigger board and then transferred onto a smaller board saving hours of frustration and this was proven perfectly in this session as I watched them all doing things they had never been capable of before our lightwind training. Cool.

All in all, another fantastic clinic, once again finished up with the customary "award ceremony" at the big brother house where all the participants were given worthless trinkets for their toil. Everyone deserved a prize for their attitude and commitment during a fairly frustratingly lightwind week and, like I said, it all paid dividends as they had all improved alot in a short time. Equally as importantly however, we all had a great week of fun together windsurfing, surfing, playing golf, SUPing, horseriding and drinking and I think sometimes we tend to forget that that´s what it´s all about- fun! So thank you all for an unforgettable week of fun and frolics both on and off the water- I need a rest now but the wind´s blowing so maybe next week I´ll be able to chill like Ian and James...

So there it is, another one come and gone. There´s talk of a summer clinic this year so keep your eyes peeled on http://www.puravidaboardriders.co.uk/ for more info. I´ll leave you with Justin´s "family holiday" video, taken on the real lightwind days (we didn´t get any video of the windier days this year- slack) where you can see Amber on her first two days I think, Chucky´s horrific horseriding posture and Justin´s SUP outfit in all its glory...

Welcome to the site!Aswell as regular features and news updates from Fuerte, I am going to be using this site to promote my windsurfing clinics.
After 15 years on the island,having competed in the PWA freestyle world cup and now representing Fanatic Boards and North Sails, I have decided to give something back to the sport which has given me so much over the years.
My aim is to provide clinics "tailor-made"for each individual, with a strong emphasis on practical in-the-water instruction, backed up by on-the-beach tuition and video analysis. The consistent conditions here in Fuerte make learning so much easier and, perhaps equally important, more fun than the typically inconsistent, cold UK - why not come over for a week and improve your windsurfing by a year!!!I can help with any manoeuvres from carve-gybe through to advanced jumping and freestyle, just email me with your wish list and we'll take it from there! Over the next few months, I am going to be video-chronicling manoeuvres which you can check out on the right in my tricktionary sections. This will give you some idea of the things we can work on, or, if you can't make it over here, you may find them useful to help understand and break down a manoeuvre you would like to learn (hopefully, the slow-mo will help in this respect!).Just click on the trick and scroll down..........Anyway, keep checking it out as I have loads more in my bag of tricks and will be updating as and when I get the footage.If you're interested, e-mail me on gibboinfuerte@yahoo.co.uk See ya in Fuerte? Stephen.............